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Keeping Quests Fun in Mists of Pandaria

Keeping World of Warcraft's quests interesting after almost eight years of life must be a herculean task, but David "Fargo" Kosak, lead quest designer for WoW, feels up to the challenge. If you're a longtime GameSpy reader, you might remember his name from our earlier days, when Kosak produced a wonderful comic series known as Flintlocke's Guide to Azeroth for GameSpy from 2004 to 2007. Kosak and his Fargo alterego are both a part of World of Warcraft now, and I had a chance to speak with him about his promising ideas for how he and Blizzard will redefine World of Warcraft's questing experience for Mists of Pandaria.

Two generations of GameSpy.

Yet I had a heck of a time finding Fargo for the screenshot above thanks to Blizzard's extensive use of phasing in the last expansion, Cataclysm, which altered the landscape based on your progression in a questline. He wasn't in the place where my guide said he was supposed to be because I'd advanced too far in the storyline. The idea behind phasing was to give players the feeling that their actions had an impact on the world around them, but it often had the regrettable side effect of keeping us from seeing each other and playing together if we were in different phases -- same place, different time. For Mists of Pandaria, Kosak plans to keep such drastic uses of phasing to a minimum while questing.

Oh, There You Are

"As I instruct my team, phasing is like a story sledgehammer," said Kosak. "It's the big gun. We want to avoid it as much as possible. There's still phasing in Mists of Pandaria for major story moments, but it'll be very obvious that you've been phased." And even then, the big change for Mists of Pandaria over most of Cataclysm is that players will be able to see their friends even if they're in different phases -- the difference being that one player will see one version of the surroundings and others players will see another. "We did a little bit of that in patch 4.2 with the Firelands. We really want to keep that, moving forward. Being in an MMO, you want to be with other people."

Even when just hanging around the local quest hub.

Yet that renewed attention on your fellow players doesn't mean that Mists of Pandaria will witness a return to open-world group quests in Pandaria, which effectively became extinct in Cataclysm. Instead, Kosak notes that the new emphasis is on other ways of getting players together. "People have less patience these days," Kosak said. "The biggest problem with group quests way back in the days of vanilla WoW was the process of actually getting people together. It took a long time. It was a shame, especially if it was part of your quest progression, to just hit this brick wall where you need to find some other people, and if fewer people are in the zone it's even harder."

"The world in Pandaria definitely feels much more alive than in previous expansions."

On the plus side, however, Kosak mentioned that world bosses will make a return. "In Kun-Lai Summit, the Sha of Anger will pop up in random spots around the zone. He'll change the spawning around his area. He'll actually pollute the local wildlife or the local creatures and then it'll take a raid group of around 40 people to take him down," Kosak said. "So there are some cases of dynamic stuff happening beyond phasing. The world in Pandaria definitely feels much more alive than in previous expansions."

We're All In This Together, Remember?

Kosak pointed out that he and his team have gone to great effort to fix that with Wrath of the Lich King's influential group-finding tool, and they plan to make the process even easier with Mists of Pandaria's instanced "scenarios" (the first of which appeared in the latest patch). The traditional trinity of tanks, healers, and damage dealers isn't required in scenarios, particularly since they're usually based on objectives such as defending villages or killing a set number of enemies rather than simply downing bosses as in a traditional dungeon."We'll put the group together for you, so you queue in with your friends or we'll find a group for you. You can get in instantly regardless of your class or role, which is cool because it solves that patience problem."

But what's more patient than a panda?

Instead, Kosak sees strong inter-player relationships developing from the new Challenge mode dungeons, which recreate some of the feeling of earlier expansions of World of Warcraft. "You can't queue for Challenge mode dungeons," said Kosak, "and you have to find four friends, you have to be on the same server, and you have to travel to the same dungeon. So you really do need that close social connection to complete a Challenge mode. And because of that, we can make those really difficult. You really have to work together with your team." Adding to the challenge are dungeon timers and normalized gear, which remove any concerns that a well-geared party can steamroll through the content as they can in WoW's existing Heroic dungeons. "As a result, you leave with this real sense of pride that you as a team can accomplish something. That's really important for us."

Doing Our Own Thing

"We're always experimenting. We're always trying to find the right balance. I think we went too linear in Cataclysm, and I think you'll see we're going the other direction in Mists."

Mists of Pandaria will also mark a shift away from Catacylsm's relentlessly linear storylines, which had a tendency to discourage exploration. "We're still trying to find that perfect balance, and I think we're getting a lot closer with Mists of Pandaria," Kosak said. "I think Mists of Pandaria is more like a big, juicy novel, and you can kind of read the chapters in any order. The story's all there, and we give you a chance to pick and choose. We make sure that, if you skip a quest hub, the next quest hub doesn't follow the story in a way that is impossible to follow. We try and catch you up."

Kosak pointed out that the opening zone, Jade Forest, is still fairly linear, but it nevertheless offers some standalone quests if players wants to venture out explore. "Kun-Lai Summit is particularly open-ended. You can roam around and there's all kinds of stuff to do there," Kosak promised. "Again, we're always experimenting. We're always trying to find the right balance. I think we went too linear in Cataclysm, and I think you'll see we're going the other direction in Mists."

Mists of Pandaria occasionally lets you step into another character's shoes for quests.

Kosak's also putting attention toward making daily quests more interesting in Mists of Pandaria, and gaining reputation with a particular faction will be more rewarding than filling a bar at the bottom of the screen. "Every faction has some kind of angle now," Kosak said. "Take the Tillers, the salt-of-the-earth Pandaren guys that you interact with. As you do daily quests with them, you unlock different upgrades for your own personal farm in their area. It plays a bit like Harvest Moon in that respect. And then the daily quests change every day. Every day different quest-givers will send you out, and you'll have individual reputations with each of the quest-givers. You can find stuff around the terrain that you can give to them as gifts."

There's also going to be considerable variety to the daily quests, according to Kosak. "The Vale of Eternal Blossoms, for instance, has over 100 daily quests. So in any given day, you'll maybe do a dozen, but it's very randomized and very progressive, so you're going to be doing different things at Revered with that faction than you were doing when you were just starting out."

Getting By With a Little Help From Friends (and NPCs)

"Every day you'll get to pick somebody who complements your class abilities and go out and do quests with your companion."

Kosak pointed to the Shado-Pan faction when asked for example of how the daily quests differ from previous expansions. "The Shado-Pan are kind of the stoic guardians of the Pandaren culture, and they ward against the dark energy of the Sha," Kosak said. "Their quests are designed to have a companion with you -- either one of your friends or one of the Shado-pan. Those NPC companions have to be unlocked. You have to defeat them in a duel before they'll decide to join you, and you can unlock them as you progress through the faction. Every day you'll get to pick somebody who complements your class abilities and go out and do quests with your companion."

I pointed out that the Oracles and Frenzyhearts of Wrath of the Lich King offered companions as well, but Kosak pointed out that those NPCs were mostly passive. "We specifically set up a quest so that on the days when you're questing for the magic-using group of the Shado-pan, we specifically have you targeting areas and targeting creatures where it's helpful to have a mage with you, or a healer with you. They're not as smart as a player, but they do try to help out."

But who needs brains when you have two furry fists?

Kosak also has some high hopes for Mists of Pandaria's longevity. I confronted him with my theory that one of the reasons World of Warcraft witnessed its recent subscription decrease is that Blizzard simply didn't release any new content for almost a year, and that a lot of the updates were rehashed content in disguise, and Kosak pointed out that the reworked leveling game will allow them greater freedom to work on Mists of Pandaria proper. "It is funny that Cataclysm has a reputation for not having a lot of content, and true, there were only five level-up zones for the expansion proper," Kosak said. "But we redid the entire 1 to 60 game! It was actually more content than we'd ever, ever done. But it's hard to see that if you just look at what level 80 through 85 has to offer."

"It is funny that Cataclysm has a reputation for not having a lot of content, and true, there were only five level-up zones for the expansion proper, but we redid the entire 1 to 60 game!"

Kosak also insists that content updates will come out more frequently than they have of late. "I can tell you that right now we're working on patch 5.1 and patch 5.2 at the same time downstairs," Kosak said. "We're aiming for patch 5.1 to release shortly after the game is out. I don't want to give an exact date, because we might shoot ourselves in the foot, but we're aiming for it to be very soon."

In Kosak's view, Mists of Pandaria will be one of WoW's most ambitious expansions to date. "For casual players who don't want to work to find a group, we'll put a group together for them," Kosak said. "For players that can find a group and work to put a group together, we have great content for them as well. There's also some really good hardcore content with the Challenge Mode Dungeons, in addition to all the dungeon and raid content that we had previously that was very popular. We're trying to incorporate things for every type of player."

Call me crazy, but I'm more than a little excited to see how this plays out in practice when Mists of Pandaria comes out next week, especially after having so much fun with Guild Wars 2's dynamic events. Cataclysm has been something of a disappointment to me in the end, but I'm looking forward to seeing if World of Warcraft still possesses that power to suck up my nights and an embarrassing portion of my days.

Hey Fargo, long time no see! How've you been, buddy? Me? Oh, you know, just doing my thing down here, cracking wise at the bottom of posts. These losers they got to replace you are real jerks, though. Yeah, especially the ugly one. Oh wait, it's not safe to talk here...